Sunday, May 16, 2010

I was looking for some simple dinner ideas, something quick but still with a lot of flavor. Saw some beautiful red kale at the store and decided I wanted to my hand at greens, eggs and ham.

This is a really simple dish. If you've got a wok, this is a great way to use it, if not use a large saute pan with a tight fitting lid. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium high heat. Once it's hot, add the thinly sliced slivers of one clove of garlic. Cook about 30 seconds but don't let the garlic brown. Add the de-stemmed leaves of what ever green you have on hand, here I used red kale and dandelion greens. Stir fry the greens quickly for about a minute. Add 1/2 cup of water and let the greens cook a bit in the water until tender. Once they have cooked down, make a well in the greens and carefully break an egg into the well. Season both greens and egg with salt and pepper and place the lid on so that the egg will steam in the greens. Let the egg steam for about 3 minutes. Once the egg has steamed to your preferred state of hardness, carefully ladle the greens and egg to a bowl. Sprinkle with you favorite pork product. Here I've used some crisped up pancetta but you can use bacon or ham. Serve while hot or while reading Dr. Suess's Green Eggs and Ham. Enjoy.

OK I did it! I really really like it Sam I Am! I was really tired after three big gigs this weekend, so I just threw some olive oil into the cast iron skillet and added a huge bunch of pre-washed spinach (which promptly shrunk down to - well, you know). I was really hungry so I did two eggs. Being so hungry I couldn't bestir myself to actually chop garlic, so I added some jarred medium salsa drizzled around each egg. It did not photograph well. Like if someone started a sister website to CakeWrecks called Food Porn Gone Bad, subtitled MY GOD THE HORROR, that would have been my photo. Happily, the actual food was crazy good.

Next time I have more energy I'll do the garlic, kale, and bacony goodness. But this was a GREAT post-concert supper, after a quick walk to get out as much adrenaline as possible. Thanks so much for the idea!

Interesting choice (I'll say why in a minute) and I love the final picture. It's like toad-in-the-hole. I like the fried pancheta with this. Maybe some cheese too?

I just tried Swiss Chard last week because the Mrs told me to "get something different" instead of the usual green beans or broccoli. I had enough for 2 different recipes. The 1st had garlic, oil, butter, parmasian and wine and called for the stems to be diced and cooked and then the leaves. Awful tasting, the stems were so bitter it messed up the leaves. The 2nd was just the leaves (with some ribs) with garlic, oil, butter, lemon, salt and pepper. No stems this time. Tasted much better although I was a little heavy on the lemon.

I toyed with the idea of a sprinkling of cheese but decided to see how it tasted this way first. Yes those stems are packed full of bitter especially if they are older and tough. Generally if you want to eat the stems it's best to blanche them a bit before cooking with the leaves which it sounds like you did. All the greens, kale, mustard, collards, swiss chard, dandelion, have very distinct flavors that take some getting used to if you're not used to eating them. Still I love them and will be trying to find other ways to prepare them.